Races to Watch: Will the Netroots Sink a Microsoft Dem?

The battle to be Bill Gates' congressman should have been over by now.
Although Dave Reichert, the incumbent GOP representative from Washington
State's eighth congressional district, is still a largely popular figure,
this is a Democratic year. The percentage of Americans who think the country is
on the "right track" just hit a record low. Every morning brings another day
when Americans peek through their fingers at plummeting stock market numbers.
Further dragging down the Republican brand are the dual anchors of an
unpopular President and an unpopular war.

In most of Washington State, this has translated into support for Barack
Obama, who currently leads John McCain there by an average of 8 points. But
while Democratic challenger Darcy Burner fought Reichert in a close race in
2006, losing by just 2.9%, she is not one of the half dozen Democrats around
the country who are coasting to victory in their congressional re-matches. A
mid-September Survey USA poll showed Reichert up by 10 points (54% to 44%).
And the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which backed Burner in 2006, just
surprised the local political world by endorsing Reichert, saying he had "grown" as a congressman.

Even as Burner's campaign has become more of a long shot, she is
increasingly a cause celebre in the liberal blogosphere. The website Daily Kos calls her "a netroots hero" and sees her struggle as a crusade for liberal
bloggers as well. "Taking Darcy down, in their minds," wrote one of Kos'
main posters, McJoan, about national Republicans, "means taking us down,
Neutering us." But her tight ties to the liberal blogosphere may well
be her ultimate downfall.

The 8th congressional district was created in 1980, and for most of the
three decades since, it was the one solidly Republican area west of the Cascades
in Washington. The voters who lived in eastern King County (east of Seattle)
and the more rural areas out in Pierce County made Republican Jennifer Dunn
their congresswoman until she retired in 2004. But Reichert was elected to replace
her with just a slim margin of victory that year, in part because he was
more socially conservative than the pro-choice Dunn.

More significantly, though, the district had changed since 1980. Young
couples moving out from Seattle to buy suburban homes have added to the rolls of
Democratic voters. And as the high-tech industries expanded to the east of
Seattle, cities like Kirkland and Bellevue were suddenly filled with very
affluent but also very socially conscious residents, Gates just being the
most famous. Democrats began winning state house seats and mayoralties. Both
Al Gore and John Kerry captured the district in their presidential runs, and
the voters of the 8th have enthusiastically supported both Democratic
Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell.

Which is why the Republicans have been so pleasantly surprised by Reichert's
slim wins. The 57-year-old former sheriff of King County describes himself
as "a cop who came to Congress" and that's also an accurate explanation for his
success. He first gained notoriety after a local television station taped
him personally chasing looters down the street during WTO protests in 1999. But
Reichert became a household name after leading the task force that caught
the notorious Green River Killer in 2001. That year Reichert ran unopposed for a
second term as sheriff.

Reichert has also benefitted from a relatively moderate political record on
certain issues, most notably the environment. He was recently named one of the three "Greenest
Republicans" in Congress, and last year the League of Conservation Voters
gave him a score of 85 out of 100. But while Reichert often votes against his
party, he has been with George W. Bush on big votes, such as authorizing the
war in Iraq and supporting Bush's tax cuts, and he has gotten strong support
from the National Right for Life Committee. What may hurt Reichert more than
any positions he's taken, however, is the fact that he hasn't done much to
distinguish himself in Congress. "If you asked most people in the district
who Dave Reichert is," says one local Democrat, "I bet they'd tell you he's
still sheriff."

That hasn't been a problem for Darcy Burner, who has worked hard to
distinguish herself since the loss in 2006. Burner, who is 37 and worked as a
project manager for Microsoft for 12 years, has stayed in campaign mode
since then. Keeping her finger on the pulse of the Democratic base, she made
opposition to the Iraq War her signature issue, developing "A Responsible
Plan to End the War in Iraq" and lobbying other Democratic candidates to sign on.
And she earned hosannas from bloggers for strongly criticizing Democratic
leaders who supported the controversial FISA bill governing domestic
eavesdropping in Congress.

Now, however, the antiwar position Burner staked out at the beginning of
her campaign has become less important to voters in the midst of the country's financial crisis. While some of the 8th district's
residents work in high-tech sectors, there are large areas of Pierce County
where living standards are more modest and whose communities are less
insulated from economic downturns. And yet Burner has focused surprisingly
little on the pocketbook issues that are drawing voters to Democratic
candidates around the country.

In the all-important race for campaign cash, Burner benefits from her
blogosphere profile. She has raised $2.3 million, much of it from outside
her district. She is popular with liberal activists not just because of the
positions she's taken but because she engages with them as well. It's not
unusual for Burner to post on Democratic blogs, and less than a month before
her primary in September, she flew down to Austin to attend Netroots Nation,
the annual gathering of liberal bloggers convened by Daily Kos.

Reichert is holding his own financially, with significant assists from business
groups. The National Federal of Independent Business poured nearly $220,000
into television ad buys against Burner, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce
recently went on the air with $156,000 of commercial time to boost
Reichert. Republicans are hoping that Burner's connection to liberal activists will
turn off moderate voters who want a candidate who can relate to them and address
their kitchen-table concerns.

"Darcy Burner is pretty open about the fact that she wants to go to Congress to represent the netroots," Reichert's campaign
manager Mike Shields, told the Seattle Times. "That is her constituency, and
that is who she raised money from, and so that's who she'll do the bidding
of." But Democrats worry about the association as well. "The big question
people are quietly asking about her," says one local Democratic consultant,
"is, in building her movement, did she lose touch with the people she sought
to serve?"